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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Racist Sheep

OK, this story took place back in 2005, but I am posting it now because I feel it is a perfect example of some of the dumb asses who live in this country, and how I got revenge on one of them.

I used to work in a large medical clinic as a Medical Office Assistant. My job was to room the patients when they come in to see the doctor, take their vitals, get the room set up for the doctor, etc.

This particular day I had a lady come in (white lady I will add, which will grow more apparent soon) who just as I was about to take her blood pressure noticed a business card that had been left on the desk the previous day by an Indian resident doctor. The lady froze when she saw the card and asked in a panic "What doctor am I seeing today?!"

I assured her that she was seeing her own doctor, and that the card was leftover from the day before. She replied "Good! I don't want to see no foreign doctor. Do you know how hard it is to find a white doctor these days? The first two I had retired, and now it seems like the only ones left are all Indians or something. I am just so sick and tired of them coming here to get their education, then staying and taking the Americans' money and sending it back to whatever third world country they came from."

By this point I am in shock, and am trying to decide if I can stay in the room without going off on this woman or if I should just walk out. She then looks at my name tag and says "(Insert my real name here)?" That's a pretty name. Where is it from, I have never heard it before."

I coolly look up at her and say "It's Indian." (My name really is Indian, and actually stems back to the now-dead language Sanskrit, as well as modern day Hindi.)

This woman actually gulps and asks "Indian-Indian, or 'Native-American-Indian'?" I replied "Indian as in from India".

This woman is now looking me up and down, checking out my dark hair yet light eyes and skin. She decides I am at least part Indian, because she continues with "Is your family over there OK? Were they hurt by the disaster?"

I ask her "'Over there' where?"

She says "India, or...Afghanistan?".

Liking the the power I now had over this woman's psyche, I simply replied "My family is fine, thank you."

By this point this woman had already made her assumptions and I wasn't going to correct her. She spent all that time bashing foreign people, and now she thinks I am one and the whole thing is a classic case of "open-mouth-insert-foot." I cranked up the blood pressure cuff more than necessary, which is rather painful, finished my job and left the room. This woman was a racist (and un-educated) bitch. She probably thought I went and put a Jihad on her, which is fine by me.

Don't you just love ignorance? My dad is Palestinian and when mention this fact to certain people, one of two responses come out of their mouths: 1) Where is Palestine? 2) Is your dad going to bomb my house?

bravo to you for writing this post.. I have wanted to write about an experience similar to this but couldn't muster the courage.. and I agree with Mysterg completely - I often get that - oh you are Indian, I know so and so, who knows so and so, who knows so and so - who's Indian.. as if just knowing someone who's Indian just negates everything derogatory you said about them..